


Seeds of Discord Part 30

by kbj1123



Series: Wonder Woman & Captain America [31]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Crossover Pairings, F/M, One True Pairing, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:03:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3443102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbj1123/pseuds/kbj1123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone or something is causing violent riots to erupt all over the U.S., and whatever it is, it wreaks havoc with both Wonder Woman's health and Bruce Banner's ability to keep his rage in check.</p><p>Steve tries a few different ways to deal with the morning's events without a direct confrontation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeds of Discord Part 30

Steve sits on a concrete bench outside the building to eat his sandwich, even though it is below thirty degrees. Cold weather hasn’t really bothered him since his own change. His metabolism is fast, and mostly he’s just warm and hungry most of the time. Feeling protected and hidden by his mirrored sunglasses, he watches traffic go by and tries not to think at all. It doesn’t work. In his mind, he sees Bruce, his friend, draping his jacket over Diana’s shoulders and kissing her. He doesn’t get to the part of the scene where she immediately pushes him away. Once, not long after he was thawed, Pepper took him to an art gallery. He was so stressed and overwhelmed by how the art scene had changed: nothing was what he’d hoped. He kept calling Pepper “ma’am, “ which eventually caused her to tell him to call her Pepper, “for fuck’s sake.” The gallery full of rich people and bad art, combined with his complete social uncertainty eventually made him sweat and shake, and he went outside to pull himself together. Sort of like he’s doing now, he supposes. Sometimes he wishes he was still 90 pounds and able to get drunk. Only sometimes. Not really, he guesses. He thinks of how mean his father could get when he would drink. Nah.

He takes two more bites of his ham on rye and starts to break the crusts off into crumbs by mashing them between his fingers. He tosses the crust to the pigeons hopping around near the plowed piles of snow. The traffic makes most of the snow ugly and gray. What he’d found most discomfiting at the art show was the woman in the fur coat who was carrying a small dog with her. It was bug-eyed, shaking violently, and clearly didn’t like the crowd. It was how he felt at the time. When Pepper found him they talked for quite some time, and when she’d begun to shiver, he immediately put his coat over her shoulders. She thought he was coming on to her and cursed at him again. It occurred to him that even dating rituals were completely foreign now. Diana wouldn’t have known any better, either. In some ways, she’s even more of a babe in the woods about the 21st century than he is. Or maybe Bruce really had started out by trying to get her warm, by being a gentleman. Moving in on his wife though? That is most certainly not gentlemanly, nor is it in keeping with friendship, nor is it forgivable. 

He takes out his book. Steve likes the Lord of the Rings series. The delineations between right and wrong are so clear, and the good guys, despite their moments of strife and doubt, prevail. Diana is right, it would probably be a bad idea to go find Bruce while either of them is mad. Bruce recommended this book. Shit. He puts it away and takes out his sketchbook. Some of the icicles hanging off the bare tulip poplar look like tiny stalactites. He really needs to confront Bruce somehow, and do it sooner than later. He watches two pigeons fight over a large piece of rye crust. Eventually, they mutilate it enough so that each of them gets part of the half, and the rest is a mush of crumbs in the snow. He draws that too. Too bad there isn’t much of a career in drawing stuff anymore.

He is so lost in thought that he is startled when Thor says, “you look like you need a friend.” He must have come from the opposite direction. It’s always a little startling to Steve to see Thor in civilian clothes: red flannel shirt pulled over a SHIELD t-shirt, jeans, boots. He looks so…so…normal and human. When he first met Thor, Steve was truly frightened. “If there are people in space, what does that mean about the fact that this planet is split up into warring nations? People used to think Thor was a god…what if God is an alien? Is Heaven in outer space?” Five years later he still hasn’t found satisfactory answers, but he has indeed found a friend: someone as out of place and time in this world as he is.

After some minutes go by, Thor tells him, “very well,” and gets up to leave. 

“Oh, crap, I’m sorry Thor. I was lost in thought. No, stay. It’s been a bad morning. I don’t think I want to talk about it. I mean, you’re fine company and I’m happy to have you here. It’s not you…” he stops himself before finishing the cliché. 

Thor nods, and they watch as the cars go by. The exhaust makes the plowed snow lining the road dirtier and grayer. “Perhaps we should go inside and spar instead,” Thor suggests. 

Steve smiles. “Yeah, I feel like hitting something. Let’s go spar.” He gets up and heads toward the building’s side entrance.

“Do you mind if I ask what happened,” Thor asks, a following a few feet behind him.

“Nope. Still don’t want to discuss it. It’s between me and someone else.”

“I mean your head injury,” Thor tells him.

Steve feels his face get warm. It occurs to him that no one really wears hats anymore. He doesn’t really miss them; it’s just an observation. It also occurs to him that a ball cap or something might be in order whenever he’s outside, at least for a while. He allows himself to smirk since Thor can’t see his face. “Oh. That’s not something I want to discuss either, but I’m fine, thanks.”

Inside, Steve hangs Bruce’s jacket over a sparring dummy. Grasping the hilt of a longsword with both hands, he charges the dummy. He manages to push it back but is also repelled by the opposite force. Stupid Newton and his laws. He rushes at his target a few more times with mixed successes. 

Finally, Thor puts a hand on Steve’s shoulder to make him wait. “If you wish to learn swordplay, Captain Rogers, please, watch, and I will show you.” Thor runs his own sword into his own dummy and drives it through the imaginary opponent’s chest. Steve imitates the move and tries again. By his third run, dummy and jacket alike are stabbed through and through. He experiments with several angles until the jacket is mostly shredded. 

Thor stares at the remains. “Did verisimilitude make it easier for you to learn that quickly?” There’s a note of surprise in his voice.

“Something like that,” Steve tells him. He grabs the jacket and wipes the sweat off his face. They each attach protective coverings to their swords and put on the lined, protective jackets hanging on pegs for sword practice. Then they face each other and begin in earnest. Steve has had some practice dueling before, but not with heavy swords like this. It’s completely different, and he finds that when an opponent has a lifetime of practice and skill, he must completely focus on the battle. Thor is wearing him out. 

In fact, after about twenty minutes of mostly parrying attacks, he is taken by surprise when a third attacker joins the fight. As Wonder Woman, Diana leaps into the fray and immediately knocks Steve to his knees by slamming the broad end of her sword into his shins, then side-kicks Thor a few yards away, causing him to drop his own sword. She leaps across the distance and slams her boot into his solar plexus; she holds the business-end of her broadsword over Thor’s heart. “Stay there, you’re critically wounded, she instructs Thor, who grins. Steve rushes at her. She whirls around and presses the protected sword tip into his abdomen. Even with all that protective padding, it is painful. He staggers back a few steps but doesn’t drop his weapon. 

They begin to spar, leaping in and away from each other, like some dangerous dance. Eventually, Thor grabs her from behind and wrenches the sword from Diana’s grip. “Hey, you’re supposed to by dying!” she exclaims. Thor grins again. “I healed,” he states, and kicks away the weapon. He swings at her and she dives down between the two men, then somersaults toward her broadsword and takes an attack stance. 

After more than an hour, the three of them are finally spent. Steve lays flat on the floor and spreads his arms out. “Okay, I’m done,” he says. Diana laughs and pulls him to his feet. Thor tells him, “You have learned much very quickly. You should be pleased with your progress.”

“Thanks pal,” Steve replies. 

Thor makes a small bow to Diana. “Always a pleasure fighting with you, Princess.” Diana beams at him and bows back. “Take care Thor. We’ll see you later.”

“Do you feel better?” Diana asks after Thor leaves.

Steve starts to gather up the equipment from the floor. “Yeah, maybe a little. I’m still gonna have to talk to him about this at some point soon, though.”

Diana nods her head and starts to hang up the protective gear. “As will I. I intend to salvage this friendship, Steve. This is very painful for me.”

He shelves the last sword and walks over to hug her. “I know it is, Diana. It’s hurtful to me too, but I’m also angry. As far as I’m concerned he violated you. He took advantage of your nature and forced himself on you. Maybe not as badly as I know happens to other women, but…”

“But he is penitent and I defended myself,” she interrupts. “You don’t have to defend me.”

“You’re afraid he’s gonna go all Hulk on me,” he replies, smiling at her.

She looks him straight in the eyes. “I am terrified that he is going to change, and really hurt you.” Even when he knows she’s being slightly manipulative, it’s not easy for Steve to say no to Diana. “It’s been such a long day,” she continues. “Let’s finish it out without incident and then go do something fun. Pepper found a new Indian place that she says has really hot vegetable madras.” Steve grimaces. K-rations sound better than strange-looking vegetables covered in yellow sauce. Curry requires about four pitchers of water just for him to tolerate the scorching behind his lips and down his throat. “How do you eat that stuff and live to tell about it?” he teases. Diana pouts and makes chicken noises at him. “Fine,” he tells her. “You won the sword fight, you choose the celebratory meal.” He smiles down at her. While he’s changing in the men’s locker room, he jams the remains of the jacket into the air slots of Bruce’s locker.


End file.
